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Frankly, I think this sucks! Forget about the fact that EA screws gamers over on a constant basis and forget about the fact that steam is an accepted part of PC gaming that everyone wants a piece of, forget EA shuts down servers, forget that EA screws over your favorite franchises and forget the fact that that can't be trusted at all.

If you can get over all that and more, than hey, this is a great thing! Might as well sell your soul to the devil as it is pretty close to the same thing!

Also, car sales companies give incentives that are technically the same thing as add-ons, sometimes things you can't get elsewhere or added on later until they come out on the general market, books are sold with extra content from various sources (Readers Digest for example) that you can't get elsewhere and even movies come with extras (Sainsburys recently sold extra content discs with the movie), so it's not exclusive to games.

I know, but if I pay €60 day one for a game I shouldn't have to pay more later for content available at launch. This becomes especially bad when content becomes exclusive to a particular store, edition or service. I'm not criticising the people who pre-order, because one may want to secure his copy for various reasons, but I shouldn't be affected for waiting for the game to come out. Phisical goods, beta and early access, extra in game cash are more than enough an incentive for a pre-order. The problem is when weapons, skins or even levels are locked off for pre-order.

I know the companies' reasons, but I find it unfair. Buying the game day one it's still enough proof of confidence in the game to grant the full content, I just want to see reviews before putting money on the table.

There shouldn't be exclusive content, period. Not in shops, not online, not through pre-orders. If I buy the game I should get all that the game has to offer, which should be expanded through DLC, not subtracted through exclusive bonuses.

Locking games into the system is unlikely to happen, it would hurt individual sales, which is still where they're likely to make the most money at launch. There's certainly the possibility of unique add-on content, though, which I believe would be fine.

Well, what I was asking was: could this service bring forth other (potentially content locking) subscriptions, and would that be a good thing?
I know the guy isn't universally loved, to use an euphemism, and suspected you wouldn't like him seeing what he thinks of the XBox One. That's why I wanted to put the focus on the topic rather than he himself.

Despite that, it's a real concern, or at least a point to ponder on. However, the model could work.

I think it's highly likely that at least one other publisher would try the same thing if this is successful (and it seems like it's going to be).

The question, though, is; are you happy with multiple services on a platform or would you rather see one unified service?

There are benefits to both methods; with different services you only pay for the publishers you like and can pick and choose, paying a monthly or yearly subscription for each of them or just choose to buy individual games.

For a single service the price would be cheaper overall for those who like a range of games from different publishers and you get a much broader range of games. However, there's less opportunity to choose the potential titles on offer.

Either way, all of these are choices that aren't forced upon you, you can still continue to buy individual games whenever you want. I can see Xbox turning into a multi-streamed service and the Games with Gold possibly keeping just those Microsoft games and a few from publishers who don't have a subscription models, a sort of pick-n-mix.